PODIATRY BYTES ONE UP-ED

Wow...is all I have to say. Somebody did me one better.

I was forwarded a newsflash that a reader received as an alert from Podiatry Management which related a story about someone who sent an anonymous e-mail to college advisors warning them to carefully investigate podiatry before recommending it to their advisees. The e-mail sent to the advisors is as follows:

Dear Pre-Professional Advisor,

Recently, in an article from the December 1999 issue of Podiatry Today Magazine entitled "Podiatry: Is there room for new practices?", when asked about the number of active podiatrists, the American Podiatric Medical Association's Director of Educational Services replied, "Everything still points to an OVERABUNDANCE."

The American Podiatric Medical Association's own Forum On Medical Education Report states:

"The college applicant pool is down 40% in the last two years...There are many issues that are creating this problem: podiatric physician income, student debt, managed care, a booming job market that offers many alternative career opportunities to students, and other factors."
(http://www.apma-online.org/members/99comfor.htm)

Subsequently, the American Association of Colleges of Podiatric Medicine instituted a direct mail campaign to 25,000 junior and senior college MCAT examinees in an effort to fill seats at the podiatry schools, some of them in financial danger of closing.

It is my opinion, as a podiatrist and a parent, that this is wrong.

For years, my podiatry profession has "attracted" students to their schools using tactic and outdated statistics, then appropriated the loan money and turned the students out into a profession with limited potential and ever-decreasing demand and fiscal return.

As a good advisor, you owe it to yourself, and those you advise, to look critically at the profession of podiatry. To examine it below the surface of the direct mail campaigns and professional rhetoric.

I have written this e-mail with the hope that the students, if any, who do attend podiatry school in the near future have considered multiple viewpoints and have made a better, more well informed decision.

Thank you

(This is not spam. It is a one-time email, sincere, and purposefully
sent to you)

Doctor Concerned
drfootguy@altavista.com

INITIALLY, AND IN TRUE PODIATRIC FASHION, the editor of the PM News <http://www.podiatrymgt.com> called for the disgruntled podiatrist's head on a platter and stated:

"The most effective way to combat this cowardly...terrorism is to become an active advocate for your profession. In short, you must help your profession recruit highly qualified individuals. If each podiatrist could encourage just one college student to consider becoming a podiatrist, the profession would benefit immensely."

When the editor of PM News makes a "plea" to everyone to send talented people they know to podiatry school, I get really burned up . I have already commented on this "quick send people you know to podiatry school to SAVE THE PROFESSION" thinking below, but I need to jump in again here.

• A decline in enrollment to podiatry school (say graduating only 300 instead of 600 this year), it is not likely to hurt the profession or decrease available foot care at all.
  
  
• If there are schools truly in danger of closing for financial reasons (as I have read in some of the APMA's own literature) and you are NOT alerting the present students and applicants to that school and helping them make alternate plans...you should eventually be held accountable for interrupting their education. Think of it as a lawsuit for "failure to diagnose and notify of a malignancy."
  
  
• Proctology is consistently one of the most competitive medical specialties to get into. If they can fill their spots with all of the negativeness and joking that surrounds that specialty profession, we SHOULD be able to do the same.
  
  
• "Terrorism" is what the editor of Podiatry Management called the sending of the e-mail, but he is the same guy who wants you to fill the seats with people you know for the sake of filling the seats.
  
  What is more terroristic?
  
  Sending your opinion around in an e-mail to people who are publicly available to hear it, or the organized "disinformation" of a profession to keep young people flowing into schools that are in financial danger.
  
  I believe obtaining the mailing list of people who took the MCATs this year and mailing them a CD ROM filled with "podo-marketing" is much more terroristic than one person's admonishment to be well informed before you make a decision about podiatry.
  
  

Not surprisingly, I find no real problem with the email that was sent, it was substantially more polite than anything I would have concocted. The author of the letter appeared genuinely concerned about how podiatry schools are obtaining their students. It was obviously an OPINION, and though the editor of PM News appears pretty outraged, I can't imagine that a college advisor of any sort wouldn't just throw it away unless they are smart enough to realize that there is a lot of truth to it.


A follow-up e-news sent by the editor of PM News had a little different tone to it:

"Editor's Note: We have received a large number of letters on this topic and have selected some representative ones. Some readers apparently misinterpreted our anger at this anonymous author. It's not the message that was delivered that should upset the podiatric community. It's the target of the message and the messenger. Surely, we all agree that that podiatric medicine (as well as other medical specialties) is facing unprecedented problems."

Kill the messenger...he admits to it right there. "It is NOT the message...it's the messenger." What does that mean exactly? Like, if there IS bad news about podiatry to be delivered to college advisors, the editor of PM News thinks he should be the one to do it? I don't understand.

Being the bearer of something that is not a problem? So then you would rather no one bear a message unless they have information that WILL cause a problem? You're not clear here Doc.

Notice also how he can't mention the problems that podiatry is facing without always including "(as well as other medical specialties) " following it. Let me ask you something, have you looked at the back of a New England Journal since you graduated podiatry school? There are 27 PAGES of jobs, not including advertising. There are spots for everything from Allergist to Urology and then academic and miscellaneous jobs that follow. It is true that MD specialties have suffered some of the same reimbursement cuts as podiatrists, but to insinuate that going into an MD medical specialty has the same amount of uncertainty with regard to education, residency placement, and job opportunity is JUST LUDICROUS. No one will believe you.

I was in conversation with a GP in her first year of practice who told me that the allopathic schools have put out so many GPs and FPs over the last decade that it is actually better, once again, to go into fellowship and a specialty. It is one woman's opinion, but I trust it more than yours. She certainly is not trying to hide as many insecurities or defend herself to a bunch of advisors.

• They could have put some other podiatrist's email down as the author...or some school president's email as the return address.
  
  
• They wouldn't have included a link that was password protected - not exactly the SLICK way to get your message out.
  
  
• They could have referred to a page critical of podiatry - like this one or the Network 54 student forum.
  
  
  

As it happened all they really did was ask the advisors to make sure their advisees are well informed to make the choice of podiatry. Also, they "apparently" had access to many college advisor email addresses ( though no one has mentioned how many advisors received this email). I am wondering if the person who sent this is actually a "disgruntled" APMA, AACPM, or school employee not happy with the policies and tactics they are seeing used. Kind of like the fact that many billing fraud cases are the result of whistleblowers who have worked for the doctor. I am serious. I will BET that the person who mailed this works for some organization that is involved in recruitment, is not informed enough to send people to a site that really makes their point, and will be nervous as hell at work on Monday.

In a letter to PM News that was also published at the Network54 Student Forum <http://network54.com/Forum/23927>, the president of OCPM made a rebuttal to the anonymous email that could only be described as "typical." True to the style of many podiatrists who self-proclaim, the prez states:

"I have been in every aspect of it for the past thirty years, and will declare myself competent to state that it is indeed a viable, necessary profession for the consuming public."

Apparently, now a podo-psychiatrist, he declares himself competent to say that the profession is "viable." That certainly is something to bank $140,000 on. Words so powerful, that I, the next time I am denied access to a particular health plan, am going to quote the prez and his words verbatim and wait to be begged to be a provider. To see the whole letter go to the PM News site, or the Network54 Student Forum. In all seriousness, I must ask the following:

1. Does the president of OCPM realize that his letter, full of 'because I said so's' and 'no really this is how it is's' is exactly the kind of empty posturing that we have been hearing for over a decade, the same yadda yadda-ing referred to in the email? In all seriousness, you attempted to rebut everything that is negative in our profession with nothing more than your opinion.
   
   
2. Does he realize that the short anonymous email has more substantial referential "proof" than his own verbose emotional response?
   
   
3. Does he realize that THEY, the schools, have produced 2 decades worth of disgruntled podiatrists who's experiences from school, through residency, to getting a job have cultured a philosophy of "Every man/woman for him/herself." They don't much care whether the schools put out 600 or 200 hundred students next year.

Remember that I do NOT log or print names, initials, or IP addresses unless you request it.

Good Luck to all of you.

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